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Epistemic Humility and the Temporality of Non-Knowledge in Political Decision-Making on COVID-19

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Epistemic Humility and the Temporality of Non-Knowledge in Political Decision-Making on COVID-19 Social Epistemology A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tsep20 ‘Building a Ship while Sailing It.’ Epistemic Humility and the Temporality of Non-knowledge in Political Decision-making on COVID-19 Jaana Parviainen, Anne Koski & Sinikka Torkkola To cite this article: Jaana Parviainen, Anne Koski & Sinikka Torkkola (2021): ‘Building a Ship while Sailing It.’ Epistemic Humility and the Temporality of Non-knowledge in Political Decision-making on COVID-19, Social Epistemology, DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2021.1882610 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2021.1882610 © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 23 Feb 2021. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tsep20 SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2021.1882610 ARTICLE ‘Building a Ship while Sailing It.’ Epistemic Humility and the Temporality of Non-knowledge in Political Decision-making on COVID-19 Jaana Parviainena, Anne Koskia and Sinikka Torkkolab aFaculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland; bFaculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland ABSTRACT KEYWORDS The novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has had far-reaching effects on Non-knowing; public health around the world. Attempts to prevent the spread of the decision-making; temporality; disease by quarantine have led to large-scale global socioeconomic disrup­ COVID-19 tion. During the outbreak, public authorities and politicians have struggled with how to manage widespread ignorance regarding the virus. Drawing on insights from social epistemology and the emerging interdisciplinary field of ignorance studies, this article provides evidence that the temporality of non- knowing and its intersection with knowing is a force that leads political decision-making during a crisis. Illuminating the epistemic analysis with statements given by the Finnish government to the media in decision- making documents and in press conferences, this paper proposes that a crisis situation, itself, seems to demand from political decision-makers dynamic action while simultaneously knowing little (‘non-knowing’) about the different fronts of tackling the pandemic. We conclude that non-knowing must be recognized explicitly as an enduring and central condition in deci­ sion-making, which we call ‘epistemic humility.’ Introduction At the beginning of 2020, the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) caused global socioeconomic disruption. During the outbreak, policymakers struggled with how to manage widespread ignorance regarding the virus. Forced to make decisions under this pressure, politicians have had to consider challenges, such as how to protect citizens from the threat of the coronavirus and whether their security measures are oversized or insufficient. How much non-knowledge can decision-makers afford in assessing security without unleashing uncontrollable threats? How does the government take responsibility for decisions that must be made in a state of uncertainty and which can have fatal consequences? What kind of insecurity can they admit to in public and still stay in power? The purpose of this article is to discuss the temporality of non-knowledge in political decision- making by illustrating an epistemic analysis of actions taken by the Finnish government during the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis. Drawing on insights from social epistemology, political science and ignorance studies, the temporality of non-knowing and its intersection with knowing is a force that leads political decision-making in crisis. Epistemological discussions of unknowns, ignorance and non-knowing have emerged in the fields of feminist epistemology, social epistemology and science and technology studies (STS) over past two decades (Code 2004; Kerwin 1993; Proctor and Schiebinger 2008; Smithson 1989; Sullivan CONTACT Jaana Parviainen [email protected] Tampere University, Kalevantie 4 33014, Finland © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4. 0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 2 J. PARVIAINEN ET AL. and Tuana 2007; Townley 2011) and developed into an emerging interdisciplinary field called ignorance studies (DeNicola 2017; Gross and McGoey 2015; Wehling and Böschen 2015). In ignor­ ance studies, one of the shared research questions has examined how the power/ignorance nexus limits the capacity of groups and individuals in exercising their political agency. Like Foucault’s (1995) notion of power/knowledge, the power/non-knowledge nexus is based on the idea that power and ignorance mutually inform and constitute each other. The notion of ‘agnotology’ captures willful ignorance as socially constructed with generative political effects (Proctor and Schiebinger 2008). The research program of agnotology focuses on the epistemological state that concerns the conscious, unconscious and structural production of ignorance, whether brought about by neglect, forgetfulness, myopia, secrecy or suppression. Epistemological issues have come forward recently because of the notion of post-truth politics and various populist movements challenging political decision-making based on expert and institutional knowledge in several European countries, the USA and Brazil (Moore 2017; Hyvönen 2018; Siles-Brügge 2019). In Finland, this debate seems to be intensifying and expertise has become increasingly contested (Väliverronen et al. 2020). A growing number of political scientists, sociologists and economists have criticized rational theories and suggested that the nexus of (non)knowledge and power should be seen as constitutive for political decision-making (Beck and Wehling 2012; Daase and Kessler 2007; Innerarity 2012; Rappert and Balmer 2015). Daase and Kessler (2007) argue that non-knowledge cannot be reduced to some lack of knowledge that could be solved by looking harder at the facts or processes of conjecture and refutation. Resilience as a new paradigm has been used especially to tackle complex, unforeseeable and continually changing systems, such as climate change, where non-knowing is not ruled out but is thought to be a basis for successful anticipation, experimenting and adaptive action (Lin and Petersen 2013; Folke 2006). However, resilience has also been accused of fueling ignorance when problems have been denied to create popular consent toward the new normal and submission to existing circumstances, particularly after a nuclear disaster (Ribault 2019). Especially amidst natural disasters, accidents, terrorist attacks and pandemics, making decisions under unavoidable ignorance requires new forms of justification, rationality, legitimation and monitoring consequences so that society can function effectively (Gross and McGoey 2015). In early 2021, there is still uncertainty about combating COVID-19. We propose that the Finnish government, and especially the prime minister, Sanna Marin, represents a type of politician who does not create the appearance of knowing it all, but who is able to express a more complex epistemological orientation and use it in legitimating decision-making based on what is not yet known. This politician type is not very common in the Finnish political scene. The Prime Minister’s frequent statements of uncertainty regarding scientific knowledge about the coronavirus might create an image of an unreliable, insecure and incapable person among many overconfident and omniscient politicians. However, we assume that this political approach shows a new kind of epistemic attitude for dealing with the crisis, a perspective we call ‘epistemic humility.’ In the context of decision-making, epistemic humility concerns how subjects relate to the truth or rationality of their own beliefs compared to experts’ knowledge on the subject matter. Regarding COVID-19, we address special circumstances and requirements that concern how temporality creates a rhythm for the alternation of knowledge and ignorance, setting the essential framework for epistemic humility. Böschen et al. (2010, 790) suggest that technological change brings up complex challenges that politicians and officials try to tackle by handling non-knowing according to different ‘scientific cultures of non-knowledge.’ Governments and industries have traditionally preferred controlling orientation to non-knowledge; for example, NGOs relied on more complex orientation, which allows admitting more openly that there are systems that resist knowability and political planning (794–­ 795). Beck and Wehling suggest that reflexivemodernity itself drives ‘a politicisation of non-knowing’ (Beck and Wehling 2012, 34). In other words, non-knowledge can provide the means of making public issues politically contestable or naming them as political for differentpolitical actors. Politics is here understood as temporal action where particular decisions, adopted policies and power holders stay in power only until their actions have been put into a new perspective by some challenging SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY 3 political actor destabilizing
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